multi bootable o/s

joedeath332 · 15 May 2008 at 21:18

i am currently running XP as my O/S , but might give Vista 64 bit a go, so i was gonna set up a dual boot system, my question is , when people refer to dual booting , what way is this done is it like 2 seperate hard drives with xp on 1 drive and vista on the other drive,, and then you have to go into the bios and select the HD to boot from?
Or is there a better way ?

Burnsy2023 · 15 May 2008 at 21:19

You have installs on different drives or different partitions on the same drive. Selection is done through a boot loader program not the BIOS.

Burnsy

joedeath332 · 15 May 2008 at 21:28

Boot loader program? speak english man

any names so i can google them pls .

Burnsy2023 · 15 May 2008 at 21:36

Probably best to use the inbuilt Vista bootloader called bcd: https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/bcd.mspx

Burnsy

AndyBorzi · 15 May 2008 at 22:09

I installed Vista on a separate drive from XP. Just boot into XP, insert Vista disk and tell it what drive/partition you want it installed on.

When done, you will get an option at boot up to select the os you want. On mine, Vista is the default and will auto load after 30seconds. I didn;t have to install any extra software to enable dual boot.

modo77 · 15 May 2008 at 22:34

Give http://www.vistabootpro.org/ a go, it's an easy to use front end for the bcd.